Mitigating Malware Attacks via Secure Routing in Intelligent Device-to-Device Communications

Abstract

Device-to-Device (D2D) communications have received significant attention nowadays due to the excess number of applications and services. D2D communication promises a higher data rate, lower communication delays, and better power efficiency. Therefore, D2D is expected to be a vital technical component in Internet of Things (IoT) and play an important role with the next generation 5G. Moreover, the rapid growth in mobile capabilities opens the door to the cyber criminals that explore new avenues for malware attacks. Although the literature is proposed security schemes for malware attacks. However, the research field is still immature and unexplored in depth due to the fast evolution of malware at a rate far exceeding the evolution of security techniques. In this paper, the problem of detecting malware attacks is considered in D2D network and a secure energy-efficient routing protocol is proposed. The protocol aims at detecting malware attached to message before it infects the targeted device through optimal secure energy-efficient routes. Moreover, the protocol takes into account the attacker’s behavior, computation of players’ strategies including different attack cases and consideration of the dynamic scheme in terms of calculating malware detection capabilities and malware types due to the fast evolution of the malware. Through simulations, the proposed routing protocol is evaluated in terms of the detecting rate of the malicious messages and overall expected payoff of the defender compared with other non-strategic routing protocols. Results show that the game achieves Nash equilibrium, and leads to an optimal defense strategy for the network.